Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Cutting through needlebound fabric

A very good comment by Kareina to the previous post ("The Fny Method: Needlebinding a Sweater") made me think about the possibilities of cutting through needlebound fabric. I have previously tried cutting along the rows of stitches, which works very well! The edge stays intact and there is no need to made additional seams or anything. Very good!

Now, Kareina's comment made me wonder about the possibilities of cutting not along the row of stitches, but across. For example, if it could be possible to cut an opening along the front of my newly needlebound sweater... So this evening I picked up a small patch of needlebound fabric that I made earlier (it's just a circle, nothing fancy, I made it as a test) and simply cut it in half.

This is what a half looks like right after cutting it:

Then I used the other half for my experiment, throwing simple saddle stitches around the length of the edge. Then I folded the edge and sewed tacking-stitches back and forth and back again. (Had this been more than just an experiment I would of course have used more proper stitches instead of tacking-stitckes, and would probably have folded it so that the raw edge is tucked in completely!). Here you see what it looks like where it's folded....

And here you see what it looks like from the front!

The other half, that I didn't do anything with, isn't very durable and I can easily pull out strands from the edge. On the other hand, the half that I stitched up and folded seems to be just fine. In other words, one could actually treat the needlebound fabric more or less like a woven fabric and it would be possible to make a sweater just like I explained in the previous post, and still have it open in the front!